The Beta is shipping on the 31st. Here's what you need to know
about 4 years ago
– Tue, Mar 24, 2020 at 01:10:20 AM
The Beta is nearly upon us, so let's go through a bunch of useful things for you to be aware of. We've grouped this into:
- Info about the release
- Info about the Beta
- A little update from the team
Info about the release
What time is it being released?
We are releasing the Beta at 9pm CEST on the 31st of March. See below for your timezone.
- 9am HST
- Midday PDT (US West coast)
- 2pm ART
- 3pm EDT (US East coast)
- 7pm GMT/UTC
- 8pm BST
- 9pm CEST
- 10pm MSK
- 12am IST (1st of April)
- 3am CST & AWST (1st of April)
- 4am JST (1st of April)
- 6am AEDT (1st of April)
Sorry to those of you for whom the release is on the 1st of April, we needed to pick a time which would give us folks in Norway a good chunk of the day to prepare and in which we would be awake :)
How will I be given access?
We will start sending out emails at the time of the release. Keep an eye on your inbox (and check your spam folders).
The email will be from BackerKit and will inform you that your Steam keys are available. You will be able to click a link to go to BackerKit and collect your keys.
You are then free to redeem your key in Steam and hand out any additional keys you purchased to the rest of your party.
When will we stop being able to back the project?
We will close the Backerkit pre-order page 20 hours before the release. At that point we will charge the credit cards of anyone who has not already been charged.
What if the payment fails?
Please reach out to us or BackerKit's support team if there are any problems. We will be closely monitoring [email protected]
The majority of issues we have seen are banks being overly cautious about payments to other countries (especially banks in the US). In most cases, people were able to resolve the issue by calling their bank and telling them that the payment was legitimate.
Regardless, we are here if you need us.
I backed on the original Kickstarter instead of BackerKit. What do I have to do?
As long as you have filled out the BackerKit survey (94% of you have), Nothing! Just sit tight, and we'll get that email right to you.
If you haven't received the survey, you can request it here http://talespire.backerkit.com/.
Info about the TaleSpire Beta
Lots of people have different ideas of what Beta means. What is the TaleSpire Beta about?
The Beta is our first significant post-Kickstarter milestone. It's a very work-in-progress, development version of the game (and boy, does it feel like it).
This is not a polished product. It's an attempt at the minimal set of features required for the game to be playable.
How does it relate to the Early Access?
The Early Access will be coming out later this year and is intended to be a polished core of the game. At that point, the game will be in a more player-friendly state, and the core feature set will be present and refined. This is when you will see the game’s feature set grow and also the start of the free asset pack releases.
During the Early Access, we will start talking more about the stretch goals and when you can expect them!
Is the Beta right for my party?
It really depends on how much they mind dealing with bugs. As much as we'd love people to dive in and start trying things out, stories are precious things, so please don't force yourselves into TaleSpire if it's not a good fit yet. We have lots of time before the release to make this something great.
Can we help?
Yes! Just by trying out TaleSpire and letting us know how it went, you are helping.
When we ran the Alpha, the community showed us how they wanted to play TaleSpire. Using that, we re-wrote all the underlying code to allow us to meet those needs by the time we reach Early Access. This is our foundation, and now we are going to build on it.
However, the roadmap is not set in stone. We really need your help to test out features and show us what works for you and what doesn't. The fact this is a 3D space has meant that the verticality of boards has played a much bigger part in how people play. Building tooling for this has been an exciting challenge. If you know of mechanics that are simple and work well, please do reach out to us. It's always great to have more sources of inspiration to draw from.
We are in this for the long haul and want to be chatting to you folks about it the whole way. Let's make this!
What should we do when we find bugs?
We will have a Github repository where you can report issues that you find. When you create a new ticket, it will tell you the kinds of things to include to help us out the most. There is a link inside the game that will take you straight to this issue tracker, and we will also announce it when it is public.
As usual we will be active on the Discord channel, so come hang out with us there!
What happens immediately after the release? What is the plan regarding updates?
We are expecting that the first two weeks will just be fixing the most critical bugs that you folks find.
As soon as the initial issues subside, we will shift focus onto features. You will receive those as soon as they are finished, and so, if you want to, you can be part of the process of iterating and polishing the game on the road to the Early Access.
During the Alpha, we saw that updates only consisting of code changes were small. We envisage a similar situation during the Beta, so don't worry about having to re-download the whole game with every patch.
What is in the Beta?
- All the original tilesets from the Alpha, with the addition of some new tiles and minis
- The new building system
- Multiplayer building and play
- An early version of the new atmosphere system
- An early version of the emote system
- An early version of the GM overlay
- Line-of-sight: this shows and hides non-player creatures based on whether your selected creature can see them
- Explicit GM hiding of creatures
- Hide volumes: you can hide anything inside the region from your players
- HP and four generic stats per creature
- Per creature torches
- GM flashlight
- Session history
- Setting up creatures that exist across all boards of the campaign (we call these 'unique creatures')
What kinds of things are missing?
Many of the features the game really needs are not in the Beta. This is as planned, and they all will show up by the time the Early Access starts. Here are some notable absences:
- Rulers (these will be coming in an update soon)
- Accessibility options
- Multi-language support
- Settings/Keybinding menus
- Fog of war
- Pathfinding tools
- Creature scaling
- Setting up creatures outside of a campaign
What are the system requirements?
Here are the currently recommended specs as listed on Steam:
OS: Windows 10
Processor: 64bit
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: Graphics card with DX11 (shader model 5.0) capabilities.
DirectX: Version 11
Network: Broadband Internet connection
Storage: 1 GB available space
These figures are not based on enough real-world use for us to be comfortable this them, so we'd love to hear about how things run on your system.
Requirements will change during the Beta as we optimize, so please be aware that the performance of the Beta on your machine is not necessarily indicative of where it will be by the Early Access.
What about the other Kickstarter rewards?
The other rewards were not planned for this date. This is only the start of us delivering on our Kickstarter goals, and we will tell you more about the custom dice, Kickstarter exclusive creatures, soundtrack and more as they are created and prepped for release :)
An update from the team
How are the team doing?
We are well. Terrified, but well. Handing out something so obviously unfinished to over 20 thousand people is somewhat intimidating, and we simply don't know if it'll handle the load. It is all new territory to us!
What have you been up to recently?
A lot of everything. Tilesets are being checked over, missing pieces are being added, and a few new minis are landing.
Features in the game are being hammered into some shape that we can ship. Bugs are being found and squashed on an hourly basis, and small playtests have been happening in the evenings to try to find the worst pain points in the game.
The production database and servers are up (but for how long? :p).
We are aware that we haven't been as chatty these last few weeks. Hopefully, once this is out, we can all relax a bit more easily and hang out more once again.
What about Covid 19?
So far, we have been lucky and not gotten ill. However, if that were to change, we would let you know and immediately delay the Beta by one week. We would then re-evaluate each week until we are well enough to launch.
We are a tiny team, with only two of us working full time. Given that, it is not wise for us to try and launch the Beta with less than that.
Here's hoping that doesn't happen!
That's all for now
Phew, that is a lot to be thinking about. Thank you, not just for reading this far, but also for all your support as we try and get TaleSpire out into the world. It's going to be a bumpy few weeks, but we truly believe this year is going to be a pretty incredible one.
Warmest regards,
The whole Bouncyrock Team
...and also these donkeys
Volume tools and beta date
about 4 years ago
– Thu, Mar 12, 2020 at 01:28:58 AM
Kickstarter tells me it's been two weeks since the last update. How does time even work?
Anyway, this extra month of development has started very well. Progress has been solid on all fronts, even if none of it is shiny enough to make new screenshots of yet :) (more assets gifs coming soon though!)
We can, however, announce that the date of the Beta release with be the 31st of March. We decided to take the whole month as every day really gives us a lot of opportunities to try and catch a few more bugs (don't worry, there will still be plenty for all of you)
Work has continued both on assets and also on the GM Blocks feature. GM Blocks are places to store settings, items, and notes only the GMs can interact with.
The primary board sync bugs were mostly ironed out, and this past week only a few minor sync related bugs have had to be dealt with.
I'm working with Ree for a few days on the features that still need finishing for the beta. We first tested concurrent building and then moved on to line of sight. Line of sight is the feature that finds out what creatures are visible from another creature's point of view. We use this both to know when to reveal creatures, but also we use it, in GM mode, to put small indicators above the heads of creatures who are in the line of sight of the creature the GM currently has selected. It's a simple approach, but I should write a dev log on this soon.
We have put out some dev logs, although this past week or so, I fear it's mostly consisted of "Yup, still working on the beta."
- https://bouncyrock.com/news/articles/talespire-dev-log-159
- https://bouncyrock.com/news/articles/talespire-dev-log-160
- https://bouncyrock.com/news/articles/talespire-dev-log-161
- https://bouncyrock.com/news/articles/talespire-dev-log-162
- https://bouncyrock.com/news/articles/talespire-dev-log-163
As well as the GM blocks, Ree has also started implementing the volume tool. This will be used both for selections and also for GMs when hiding regions of the board from players. Here is a preview:
Back soon with more!
